(Ministry)
After my interview with Al for the book, I immediately googled “Al Jourgensen + Overdose + Lollapalooza 1992.” Nothing came up about the overdose, so I contacted his publicist, who was blown away. We had never heard the story, and Al had never shared it publicly. Prepare for the craziest of the crazy, folks. It’s a doozy.
Let’s start out in 1981, which was the last hedonistic days of the castle that was Studio 54. It was probably one of the last shows that the Studio hosted, and it was one of Ministry’s first. How we got that gig, I have no idea, but I do remember this: we were completely freaked out to be playing this really famous place. The show was on a Tuesday night, and there were only four of us in the band at that point, so we had backup tapes with us to help fortify the sound. Backup tapes back then weren’t on computers, but on a four-track tape machine, and those tapes were our bass sequencers and other sounds.
At that point, this show was going to be the most important gig we’d ever done, even though it was in the complete decline of Studio 54. They were gonna be shut down within the year, but to us Chicago guys, having only four or five gigs under our belt, it was a huge deal. We knew about Warhol, Grace Jones, and all the famous people that hung out there, so we were completely freaking out. We were working with a new monitor guy that night, who was recommended to us, but he was really cocky. He kept saying, “I know how to run the tape machines!” He totally looked down on us, and it was obvious he thought he was slumming it with us rookies. He was a real asshole.
Before the show, Andy Warhol came backstage, so we got to meet him. He was on coke or some weird inhalant, but he was cool and exactly how I imagined he’d be. We get on stage, and there were only four tracks on our tape machine. One was a click track that was specifically for the drummer. The other was a bass synth, and one of the others was some sparkly sound effect. The new, cocky, asshole monitor guy put the fucking tape on backwards. The click track was now blaring at 120 decibels to the crowd. All that anyone could hear for our first song was basically a really obnoxious-sounding cowbell, played in reverse.
I realized it right away, and I kept yelling and motioning at the guy to cut it. The guy flipped me off! The pit in my stomach was the size of the Grand Canyon. My first time at Studio 54, and Ministry’s first time in New York City, and I bolt across the stage and dove like fucking Superman into the monitor pit. I literally started strangling the fucking monitor guy. The great thing about New York and Studio 54 at the time was the audience thought the whole thing was some kind of weird performance art. I had one hand on the guy’s neck, and I finally shut the tape off with my other hand. Then, we fought for another minute or two.
I finally popped back up, and I grabbed a guitar tech who actually knew how to run the tape machine. He switched the reels, played it forwards, and we soldiered on, none the worse for wear. But man, what a fucking let-down. It was the most embarrassment I had ever felt in my life, but I don’t think the audience cared. I think they honestly thought that every Ministry show started with me beating the shit out of the monitor man.
That fear has never gone away. Forty years later, I’m scared shitless before every show. These people have paid good money to see us, and I want to represent why they bought that ticket in the best possible way. Starting out, I had no idea what to expect every night. That suspense made an already anxious person like me, anxious on steroids. I really fucking hated those early years playing live, and I’d probably live to one hundred if it wasn’t for those early days. The stress alone probably took twenty-five years off. That’s why I gravitated to downers and psychedelics, just to get out of my own head. The other part was after being on the road for three months. What do you do with the other nine? Keep self-medicating! It certainly helped, because anxiety is debilitating. To have people judging you while you’re baring your soul on stage is fucked up. So, I was medicating a lot, which brings me to my next story.
In 1992, Ministry got added to the Lollapalooza tour. I was a full-blown fucking junkie. I was doing at least eight-to-ten shots a day, with a $400 a day habit. We were scheduled to play right before the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I was in the dressing room doing my pre-gig heroin shot. This particular batch of heroin I had scored in St. Louis, or somewhere off-the-radar, and I wasn’t expecting a huge level of potency. It’s like today with that fentanyl crap. I’m telling ya, this stuff was heavy, and I went down like a rock. I shot it ten minutes before the show, and usually, it would just calm my nerves. This stuff deadened me, and I was barely breathing. I wasn’t dead, but whoever ran the tour back then didn’t want the hassle of calling the paramedics or dealing with the publicity. To try and get me onstage, my tour manager had to buy some crack. He had never done crack before, but he was inhaling it and blowing it into my mouth to wake me back up.
Those festivals run like clockwork, so if you’re not onstage, you’re fucked. If you miss your set, your career is fucked. It’s not necessarily true, but they make you think that. So, my tour manager is working on me, blowing crack into my mouth, while I’m lying prone on the dressing room floor. The Red Hot Chili Peppers roadie, I forget his name but God bless him, had long dreads like me. He took the cowboy hat off me, went onstage, and sang the first three songs of Ministry’s set as me. Nobody in the crowd knew the difference. He saw me on the side of the stage after the third song, after they had resuscitated me and quickly gave me back my cowboy hat. If anyone was paying close attention, they would have seen that suddenly I was wearing completely different clothes. The show kept going, and it turned out to be a really good one! That guy saved the show—and probably our career—by pulling it off.
I don’t think Perry Ferrell had any clue what was going on because two days earlier, I had thrown him out of my dressing room. We got there around 5:00 p.m., and we were set to go on at 8:00. Perry was in our dressing room alone, wearing only a bath towel, shooting heroin. We had a very heated exchange, and I haven’t seen Perry since that day, when we almost came to blows. I was a junkie too, so I understood, but pick somebody else’s dressing room!
I want to end on a positive story. It was the last show of our first Australian tour, in Perth, sometime around 1995, on the Big Day Out Festival. As we went onstage, it was right as the sun formed a half-moon on the horizon of the ocean. It was an outdoor venue that looked right out at the ocean, and this gigantic sailboat was cruising past this burnt-orange sun. The crowd, about 30,000 people, had lit this massive bonfire in the middle of the mosh pit and were dancing around it like Lord of the Flies. I remember looking over at the band and saying, “It doesn’t get any better than this.” There are so few goose bump, spine-tingling moments like that. It had all come together, and it all made sense.
The next morning, we had to fly to Japan. I had decided I didn’t want to go, so I handcuffed myself to a railing in the Perth Hilton. I had thrown the handcuff keys out the window into the shrubbery. My poor tour manager had to dig around in the bushes to find it and get me out of there. That moment on stage in Perth was so perfect that I didn’t want to leave. I was set to live there for the rest of my life. The road crew tackled me, opened up the handcuffs, and pushed me into the plane. Our plane landed on the day, on the minute, on the second of the Kobe Earthquake of 1995. The plane started veering all over the place as we touched down, shaking violently. We had to stay in that airport for twenty-four hours, as the venue had been destroyed. I knew something bad was going to happen because the most beautiful thing had happened the night before in Perth.